On 17th of February, the Japanese satellite Hitomi, the most sensitive X-ray telescope, was launched. On 26th of March, space debris is spotted close to the spacecraft and the communication with the satellite is lost.

Astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to determine the distance of the farthest galaxy that has ever been observed. The galaxy existed only 400 million years after the Big Band, when the Dark Ages of the Universe were just ending and before the cosmic reionization era start. This means that it belongs to the very first galaxies that formed.